Yesterday, along with a busy intersection of South Boston traffic, I paused to watch this family of geese cross the street.

They used the crosswalk!

They trooped across unruffled even though there were (of course, it is Boston after all) a few irritated drivers honking at them, as technically it wasn’t their turn to walk. THEY CAN’T READ THE SIGN, GUYS.

I like to keep my frequently worn jewelry on little plates or salvers on my dresser, readily accessible and just as easily deposited at the end of the day. I mean daily or weekly favored pieces, which I cannot be bothered (and often do not wish) to put in a box or drawer.

I may have a few little trays going, one by the bed, one on the dresser – anyplace I find I would otherwise leave a pile. The selection of featured jewelry varies with my mood, what I aspire to wear, what I habitually wear*, and any number of mysterious factors. The plates, too, get switched out according to my whims, as any little tray or plate-like thing (saucers and more elaborate coasters can work well) will do. I find I like them to have a balance of plainness, such that the jewelry can be quickly discerned and picked out, and luxury, such that they are in themselves objects of beauty, but they may be any material,** and a range of sizes can serve.

**I’ve been absently browsing for a rectangular stainless steel tray to serve the purpose, as I like that look. Nothing strikes my fancy yet, though.

Here’s the plate of the hour, a beautifully glazed ceramic appetizer plate. In my eyes it was destined from the start to be a jewelry repository. I’m always wondering what other strategies people employ for such tasks. How are you solving the question of what to do with frequently used jewelry? Are you dutifully putting them away in their rightful places? For me that is so unrealistic as to be inconceivable.

I like the routines of grooming and preparation surrounding the dressing table, a key player in the (not the literal but certainly the ceremonial) beginning and ending of each day. This for me is almost always some elaborate series of attentions paid to the skin but the full setup* is stocked with all manner of tools and medicaments, cosmetics and paraphernalia. A great deal can be accomplished in this space, particularly in the realm of transformation, and it’s often a meditative process. It strikes me as a private space, too, where I am with myself (with the reflection of myself, too, causing that multiplication/division of identity a mirror always does for me).

*No coincidence that I show you only a fragment, though this is partly a matter of obscuring what the mirror would betray, which is a true, true—as I define it—mess (this, too, is private).

This, I realize, sort of in conjunction with my bathroom and all its tools and potions and particulars, is the main reason I don’t like to be away from home. My current favorite products within familiar reach. This general arrangement, at once stylized and utilitarian, and the set of routines it facilitates, is one I don’t like mucked with.

Showing you a bit of it as I enjoy seeing how people store things; how their lives, their daily environments, really look. In this no detail is too small to interest me (sometimes it is only the small details that will interest me). I keep this space quite organized (there are cardboard dividers in the mugs to sort pencils and brushes into subcategories, I’d just used the lipstick when I took this), though I change it around often, too, rotating products in and out according to my rapidly shifting whims and preferences.